Segregation and Crime: The Relationship between Black Centralization and Urban Black Homicide

Among the handful of studies that examine the influence of segregation on crime, there is a heavy reliance on the idea that segregation is a structured form of inequality that generates high crime rates in ways similar to that of other forms of inequality. The authors attempt to sharpen the link between Black segregation and Black crime by considering whether the centralization of urban Blacks to inner-city areas is associated with high rates of Black violence in the United States. Using racially disaggregated U.S. census and Uniform Crime Report data for 1990, the authors estimate sequential ordinary least squares models that examine the link between segregation and Black violence. A positive relationship between the city rates of Black homicide and the geographic centralization of Blacks relative to Whites is found. The evidence suggests that the structural impediments unique to the inner city are strongly related to the rates of Black homicide in those areas.